I’d say the fullness of this skirt would probably be best for kids’ sizes 2 through a slim 12. (Here’s the part where I admit to trying my 10 year old daughter’s skirt on my 2 year old son, just to see.)

Determine the length you want your finished skirt to be. Divide that number by 3.5. I wanted my finished skirt to be about 12”. 17/3.5 is 3.42-ish. I rounded up to 3.5”. All the strips you cut will be this measurement plus 1” high (so 4.5” in my example) EXCEPT for the very top tier/waist panel. That strip will be 1/2” taller than the others (so 5” in my example).

Tier 1 (the waist panel) will be cut the entire width of your fabric, roughly 45”.

Tier 2 will be 60”. Cut 2 30” long strips.

(tiers 1 & 2)

Tier 3 will be 80”. Cut 2 40” long strips.

Tier 4 (the bottom band) will also be 80”. Cut 2 40” long strips.

(tiers 3 & 4)

You’ll notice that with seam allowances and whatnot these tiers won’t end up precisely the measurements I’ve listed. IT’S OK! This skirt is SUPER forgiving.

All seams are 1/2”, unless otherwise noted.

Start by sewing the short ends of each tier together. You should have 4 giant loops.Tangent: Because I have issues, I seamed my tier 1 twice. I like having a seam there to match up with all the other seams. You really don’t need to do this and you’ll be 100% fine just matching up the half way point with the seams on the other tiers.

(actual seam on the left, seam I added in support of OCD on the right)

Take tier 4/the bottom band and press it in half, wrong sides together.

Run a long gathering stitch (stitch length as long as it’ll go on your machine and NO BACKSTITCHING) along the top edge of tier 3.

I did mine about 1/4” from the edge and did one for the front and then one for the back. I know many people like to do 2 rows of gathering stitches, just in case one breaks. I never do…I like to live on the edge. Or, I’m lazy. You decide.

Gather (by pulling the bottom/bobbin thread) the top of tier 3. Matching seams, middles, and/or anything else that makes you happy, pin it (right sides together) to the bottom of tier 2.

Stitch along the edge, creating your waist casing. Leave a 2-3” gap in the back for inserting the elastic.

Thread elastic the same length as the waist of the intended wearer through your casing. Once it’s threaded, have them try the skirt on if at all possible. It seems like my elastic always gets stretched out a little during this step!

I picked these up at JoAnn’s a few weeks back. They were 40% off at the time, so I paid $6.

Macy and a friend and I busted them out last Friday whilst 2 of my boys were at a party and the other one was sleeping.

The directions were confusing and some things on the printed instructions were different from what was on the exterior packaging, but hey….$6, right?

I did a little Google-ing and we decided to wet our shirts first.

We twisted and turned and then went to put the elastics on and they broke. Like, all of them. Like, before you actually even stretched them. BRITTLE.

Time out. Run to the craft room and search frantically for elastics. Call BC at work to see if he has any he can run by because one kid is sleeping and we can’t leave to get some. Finally find some. Time in.

Each dye color comes in its own applicator bottle. You just fill the bottle with water and shake. They dissolved quite easily.

We dyed and dyed and dyed some more. 2 pairs of plastic gloves are included in the kit. Plastic wrap (for wrapping your shirts) is not. We wrapped them and waited. The instructions said 4-6 hours. The packaging said 6-8. We went with 6.

Helpful hint: You’ll want to save your gloves for the unwrapping/elastic removal or you’ll end up looking like this:

And your fingernails will still be stained like 3 days later. At least that’s what I hear….

The packaging says “Ages 8 and up”. I’d say this is pretty accurate, unless you were outdoors and really didn’t care if your kids got dye on the clothes they were wearing.

The packaging also says this product dyes up to 6 shirts. We dyed: 2 size L-ish shirts, 4 size M-ish shirts, 2 onesies, a tank top, and a pair of undies. Don’t ask.

Our package came with pink, blue, and green dye. The pink came out pretty pale.

The blue and green were much brighter.

And, an action shot:

So, best tie dyeing job ever? Probably not.

Worth $6? FOR SURE.

**********************

FTC disclosure: I bought this product with my own $6. I was in no way compensated for this review. The opinions are mine entirely. So are the stained hands.

Did you know Crap I’ve Made has a Flickr group? You can find the link at any time up on my menu bar under Crap You’ve Made. Go add your stuff! Please?

Projects from the Flickr group will be featured on Fridays.

And, there’s now a Flickr stream widget over in my left sidebar. Click on over from your reader and check that out.

TONS of awesome new stuff in the Flickr group as of late!

Today I want you all to meet Ashlee @ I’m Topsy Turvy. I met her at CBC a while back and then got to hang out with her again at EVO.

In addition to the hair flowers, she was rocking one of these insanely awesome zipper purses:

And those aren’t even what she’s best at. The cakes! Oh the cakes!

Ashlee fell down the steps and broke her wrist in 3 places this week. As a fellow klutz (I’ve broken my arm, birdie finger, other fingers, foot, other foot, multiple toes, tailbone, kneecap….you get the picture), I urge you to go laugh at her give her some sympathy!

The number of emails I’ve gotten from people willing to do a giveaway for my 1,000,000th hit party is seriously AMAZING. I’m going to sit down tonight after the kids are in bed and respond, I swear.

Finally Feels Like Summer

My kids just got out of school last Friday. Weird, right? They started swimming lessons today (no pictures, I suck). We’re trying a new “thing” where they have to do a special project/job every day before they’re allowed to run wild.

They hate it.

I love it.

Kids in the Kitchen Tip

Yesterday we were all making tacos for dinner. Macy(10) and Keller (7) were both chopping stuff. Campbell (4) can’t be trusted with a knife. He really wanted to help, though. I needed something he couldn’t ruin. I decided to have him measure water for the taco seasoning.

Problem? He doesn’t actually know fractions.

Solution?

Mark the outside of the measuring cup with a dry erase marker.

Campbell knew exactly how high to fill the measuring cup and it wiped right off when we were done.

And that concludes this episode of random!

Wait. It doesn’t. I thought of a question for all of you.

Why can’t I actually get my dishes clean with those tablets? The store was out of powder last time I went, so I decided to give the tablets a try. EPIC fail.

Have you ever noticed the counter waaaaaaaaaaaaaay down at the bottom on my right sidebar?

Go ahead and click on over and check it out. I’ll wait.

In the next month or so, I anticipate reaching

Crazy, right?

So, in celebration of 1,000,000 hits and my 2 year blogiversary, I thought it would be fun to have a day/week/whatever of giveaways.

Everyone likes free stuff, right?

If you have something you’d like to give away, email me at [email protected]. I will ask that you take care of the shipping to the winner (I SUCK at getting to the post office) and not have any crazy requirements for entering.

In return, you’ll get some free publicity and traffic and a warm feeling inside that just won’t go away. Or something.

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Feel free to link to or feature (no more than one image, please) any tutorials on this site, as long as credit is given. Tutorials are for personal (non-commercial) use only. For more information, see the details of my copyright way down at the bottom of the page!